1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor inspection apparatus performing an inspection of a semiconductor device.
2. Description of Related Art
In a typical semiconductor inspection apparatus performing inspection of a semiconductor device by measuring electric characteristics of the semiconductor device, a probe is contacted with an electrode pad on the semiconductor device to measure the electric characteristics of the semiconductor device.
Be—Cu material or W material is normally used as a material of the probe. Be—Cu material has small resistance value and great measurement accuracy while it has poor durability. On the other hand, W material has great durability while it has poor measurement accuracy due to its large resistance value. Therefore, it is necessary to perform Kelvin measurement having better measurement accuracy when electric characteristics of the semiconductor device are measured by the probe with W material. In Kelvin measurement, a force probe and a sense probe are contacted with the electrode pad to measure electric characteristics. The force probe applies voltage to the semiconductor device and the sense probe detects voltage of the semiconductor device.
Semiconductor devices have been highly integrated and semiconductor packages have been miniaturized these days, which means size of the electrode pad and the electrode pitch have been reduced. On the other hand, the area of the electrode pad or the pitch between electrodes is needed to be large enough to bring the probe into contact with the electrode pad with high accuracy. It is difficult in the conventional technique to arrange the probes at narrow pitches in a vicinity of the device. Therefore, it has been more and more difficult to bring the electrode pad of the highly integrated and miniaturized semiconductor device into contact with the probe with high accuracy.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 62-109334 discloses a technique bringing a first probe into contact with an electrode pad and bringing a second probe into contact with an upper portion of the first probe to perform Kelvin measurement. Hence, it is possible to bring miniaturized electrode pad into contact with the probe.
Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 5-144895 discloses a technique bringing a probe 50 to which tips of the sense probe and the force probe are Kelvin connected into contact with an electrode pad 51 to perform Kelvin measurement, as shown in FIG. 3.
Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 9-203764 discloses a technique binding a lead 60 of a semiconductor device 61 by a force probe 62 and a sense probe 63 to perform Kelvin measurement, as shown in FIG. 4.
However, in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 62-109334, the second probe is arranged in an oblique position with respect to the first probe (see for example FIG. 3B of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 62-109334). Therefore, the space occupied by two probes becomes so large that the probes cannot be arranged at narrow pitches with respect to a highly-integrated semiconductor device. In the same way, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 5-144895, the probe 50 is divided into two parts, which makes it impossible to arrange the probes 50 at narrow pitches with respect to the semiconductor device.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 62-109334, the first probe and the second probe are sharply formed, which makes it difficult to contact two probes with each other with high accuracy.